Steve Wilent

Jazz Timber Sale appeal by enviro group Bark – 9th Circuit ruling.

The video is fascinating: Video of 9th Circuit hearing.

And an article, 9th Circ. Nixes Enviro’s Appeal Of Ore. Forest Thinning Project

An essay in Evergreen magazine by Barry Wynsma: The “Single Use Sustained Yield Act”: A Thoughtful Proposal.”

“I believe there is a better way to free the shackles of the Forest Service foresters and allow them to get busy managing a portion of our National Forests. I’d like to propose that Congress enact a new environmental law titled the “Single Use Sustained Yield” Act. “SUSY,” for short.

“SUSY” would designate 25 per cent of every National Forest for sustained yield timber management. These areas would be exempt from the project level NEPA process, and exempt from Endangered Species Act (ESA) and National Forest Management Act (NFMA) sensitive species considerations including critical habitat designations. The lands would be managed solely for sustained yield timber production, meaning harvest would never exceed annual growth.”

This short film on the Rim Fire and the need for active management is very well done:

<a href=”https://vimeo.com/122811230″>”The Fire Next Time”</a>

Description:

“In this 13-minute film, filmmakers Stephen Most and Kevin White examine how problematic policies, fuel build-up, and climate change have endangered America’s forests. When the Rim Fire burned 256,000 acres of the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park in 2013, it exposed the impacts that high intensity wildfires are having on watersheds, wildlife, and carbon storage. It also forged a coalition of environmentalists, loggers, scientists, officials, and land managers who are responding to this megafire and recognize the need to forestall the next one. “The Fire Next Time” is a precursor to Filmmakers Collaborative’s feature-length work-in-progress, “MEGAFIRE at the Rim of the World.” For more information, visit megafirefilm.org.”

Agency press release from yesterday….

Release No. 0087.15
Contact:
Office of Communications (202)720-4623

U.S. Forest Service Partnership Effort Improves Health of America’s Forests

Program has supported 4,300 jobs per year, improved 1.45 million acres of America’s forests since 2010

WASHINGTON, April 7, 2015 — The U.S. Forest Service announced today that 1.45 million acres of America’s forests and watersheds – an area larger than Delaware – are healthier as a result of collaborative partnerships to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Authorized for 10 years through the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) was created to emphasize partnerships between government and local forest workers, sawmill owners, conservationists, businesses, sportsmen, outdoor recreationists and others to improve forest health and promote the well-being of local communities.

“Collaboration is working. CFLRP demonstrates that we can bring together forest industry, environmentalists, local communities and others to produce healthier forests while producing a sustainable timber supply for local mills,” said Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Robert Bonnie. “This long-term investment gives our partners the confidence to fully engage in restoration activities. The collaboratives expand Forest Service resources – generating over $76.1 million in matching funding from partners in the past five years, and with continued support we expect this number to grow over the next five years.”

“The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program is a groundbreaking approach to improving our nation’s forests, making communities safer and bolstering local economies,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “The Forest Service is anchoring projects across the country with more than 200 local partners to restore our forests and support our local economies.”

Since 2010, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program has brought local communities and timber companies together to improve forests conditions across 23 high-priority project sites, from Florida, to Missouri, to Washington State and places in-between. The coordination with local partner organizations is essential to getting substantial work done.

The program’s restoration activities have resulted in part:

• More than 1.45 million acres of forest more resilient to the effects of catastrophic wildfire,
• More than 1.33 million acres of wildlife habitat improved,
• More than 84,570 acres of forest lands treated through timber sales,
• More than 73,600 acres treated for noxious weeds and invasive plants,
• Supporting 4,360 jobs in local communities each year.

Under Secretary Bonnie said the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program is improving the health of forests and rural communities by exceeding five-year targets for production of forest products. The Forest Service set a five-year goal for CFLRP projects of 1 billion board feet of timber sold and has exceeded that by nearly 25 percent.

“The restoration challenge is significant. We are making a difference in the forests and in surrounding communities,” said Chief Tidwell.

“This program demonstrates the value the Forest Service places on collaboration and on-the-ground achievements,” said Steering Committee member Dylan Kruse of Sustainable Northwest. “The last five years have proven that listening to diverse interests and providing smart investments pays off for measurable improvements across the landscape.”

More information on the five-year report and links to project factsheets can be found athttp://www.fs.fed.us/restoration/CFLRP/index.shtml.

The mission of the Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

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A commentary in the form of an article in High Country News:

Will the Northwest Forest Plan come undone?
The Forest Service and BLM embark on revising the iconic plan and may allow more logging.

Excerpt:

“On a March evening in Portland, Oregon, Forest Service officials met with about 150 members of the public for a “listening session” as the agency begins the process of crafting a replacement for the plan. It expects to finish that work by 2019.

“Many of those in attendance at the Portland session were members of the environmental group Bark, which insists that the current plan is allowing too many trees to be cut down, especially near rivers. Conspicuously absent from the meeting were the timber workers. The scene was a major contrast to the 1993 Clinton summit, when workers protested the loss of timber jobs by loudly rolling big log trucks through downtown Portland.”

Too many trees to be cut down, especially near rivers? Where? I haven’t seen any trees cut along rivers on USFS ground in a long time.

I agree that the USFS ought to hold listening sessions in rural areas, rather than near airports in Portland, Redding, and Seattle.

This article, “Federal Land Management Not a Good Deal for Americans,” has a link to a study that comes to that conclusion.

“The states examined in this study earn an average of $14.51 for every dollar spent on state trust land management. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management generate only 73 cents in return for every dollar spent on federal land management.”

This court decision bars the BLM from proceeding with a pilot project designed to demonstrate the “ecological forestry” described by Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin. The court decision is here. From Greenwire today:

BLM can’t use ‘ecoforestry’ in Ore. woods — judge

Salvage logging has been a topic of some discussion here. This study validates what is, in my opinion, common knowledge.

U.S. Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Research Station
News & Information

Contact: David W. Peterson, (509) 664-1727, [email protected]

Media assistance: Yasmeen Sands, (503) 808-2137, [email protected]

Post-fire logging can reduce fuels for up to 40 years in regenerating forests, new study finds

Woody fuels reduced even when fuel reduction was not primary management objective

WENATCHEE, Wash. March 11, 2015. Harvesting fire-killed trees is an effective way to reduce woody fuels for up to four decades following wildfire in dry coniferous forests, a U.S. Forest Service study has found.

The retrospective analysis, among the first to measure the long-term effects of post-fire logging on forest fuels, is published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

“Large wildfires can leave behind thousands of acres of fire-killed trees that eventually become fuel for future fires. In the past, post-fire logging has been conducted primarily to recover economic value from those fire-killed trees,” said David W. Peterson, a Wenatchee-based research ecologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station who led the study.

The study shows that post-fire logging also provides a tangible long-term fuel reduction benefit, giving forest managers another tool for managing woody fuels in dry forest landscapes.

“In comparing logged and unlogged stands, we found that logged stands had higher fuels than unlogged stands, on average, during the first five years after fire and logging, but then had lower fuels from seven to forty years after fire, with the greatest differences being found for large-diameter woody fuels,” Peterson said. “This study provides a sound scientific basis for forest managers to consider fuels management goals along with recovery of economic value and wildlife habitat concerns when deciding when and where to propose post-fire logging.”

The researchers’ analysis revealed that, in unlogged stands, surface woody fuel levels were low shortly after wildfire, peaked 10 to 20 years after wildfire, and then declined gradually out to 39 years past the wildfire. In logged stands, small- and medium-diameter fuels reached their highest levels shortly after the wildfire and then declined in subsequent years, but larger-diameter fuels changed relatively little over the entire time range.

Peterson and his co-authors sampled woody fuels on 255 coniferous forest stands that were killed by wildfires in eastern Washington and Oregon—the region’s most fire-prone areas—between 1970 and 2007. Their sample included 96 stands that were logged after wildfire and 159 that were not, an approach that allowed the researchers to test the effects of post-fire logging on forest fuels. The researchers accounted for pre-fire stand differences by measuring standing and fallen dead trees and stumps in each stand. They did not consider the effects of post-fire logging on sediment, wildlife habitat, or aesthetics.

The Pacific Northwest Research Station—headquartered in Portland, Ore.—generates and communicates scientific knowledge that helps people make informed choices about natural resources and the environment. The station has 11 laboratories and centers located in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon and about 300 employees. Learn more online at http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw.

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Folks, I’ve been working on an essay about US Forest Service roads that are in need of repairs and maintenance, and how a modest increase in timber sales could pay for such work. Indeed, such work is much needed, at least on the forests I’ve visited recently. The photo below is my son, Stewart (6-foot-7) next to a pothole on a heavily used USFS road on the Mt. Hood NF. This is not a new pothole. Someone, maybe an agency person, maybe a member of the public, painted white brackets on the pavement as a warning — as the previously painted warning had faded. So this pothole is years old. It is by no means the largest pothole I’ve encountered on paved roads here. Recreation on the Mt. Hood NF is huge, but some of the roads that serve those visitors are in poor shape.

According to the fy2016 budget justification, “The FY 2016 President’s Budget proposes $154,262,000 for the Roads program, a decrease of $13,832,000 from the FY 2015 Enacted level.” The 2014 enacted level was $166 million. It seems unlikely that an increase in funding will come from Congress.

The essay will be for The Forestry Source in the next few months.  I’d like to hear about the situation on the National Forest(s) you visit. Is the forest in question is doing a good job with its limited road funding dollars? What do you think of the idea of establishing a “roads trust fund” on each forest and setting annual harvest targets for the fund? Or is there a better way to provide an adequate level of road-maintenance funding? If you’d like to pass along your comments for the article, send them to me at [email protected], and let me know if it is OK to publish them. Same with photos: pictures of potholes and other maintenance needs — or roads in good repair — are welcome. I’d like to hear from folks inside and outside of the agency.

Steve Wilent
Editor, The Forestry Source
The Society of American Foresters (www.eforester.org)

Here’s an topic worth discussing: “Critical Ecosystem In Danger, California’s Primary Water Supply at Risk.”

“Today the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC), in partnership with the United States Forest Service (USFS), announced the launch of the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program (WIP). The WIP is a coordinated, integrated, collaborative program to restore the health of California’s primary watershed through increased investment and needed policy changes.”

Sounds grand, but the need to harvest timber to accomplish those goals will gum up the works. Or will it?